April 11 (Bloomberg) -- The departure of Kathleen Sebelius
from President Barack Obama’s cabinet removes a focal point for
criticism over Obamacare’s troubled rollout, right at a moment
when the White House can blunt attacks with enrollment numbers
that exceeded targets.

Senate confirmation hearings on the president’s choice to
succeed Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary, budget
director Sylvia Mathews Burwell, will give Republicans days of
media exposure for their criticism of a program that remains
unpopular.

Those hearings will now be held months ahead of midterm
congressional elections, helping diminish the impact on voters.

Sebelius’s departure also addresses demands from some
Democrats for a change at the department to demonstrate that
Obama recognizes the difficulties, political and practical,
caused by the flawed startup of the health-care law. Sebelius
plans to leave next month.

Sebelius “has become a lightning rod,” Chris Lehane, a
communications adviser in the Clinton administration, said. Now
“it’s not as easy to use her as a foil in the fall because
she’s hit her mark and she won’t be there.”

The Obama administration set the stage for the exit hours
before news of it leaked out. Sebelius, 65, delivered to a
Senate committee the word that enrollment in Obamacare’s health
plans had reached 7.5 million, exceeding a first-year projection
of 7 million made by the Congressional Budget Office.

Early Stumbles

Obama alluded to both early stumbles with the federal
insurance exchange and the enrollment total in a White House
ceremony this morning announcing Sebelius’s resignation and his
pick to replace her.

“Yes, we lost the first quarter of open enrollment period
with the problems with healthcare.gov,” Obama said. “But under
Kathleen’s leadership her team at HHS turned the corner, got it
fixed, got the job done, and the final score speaks for
itself.”

Obama said Sebelius let him know last month of her desire
to leave once the enrollment was done.

The choice of Burwell, 48, currently director of the Office
of Management and Budget, permits an expedited confirmation
process. She was approved by the Senate just one year ago, by a
96-0 vote.

“It will help the confirmation process that Sylvia just
recently went through it,” said Jim Manley, a former top aide
to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. “I
still expect it to be nothing short of brutal.”

Burwell’s Background

Obama praised Burwell, a former president of the Wal-Mart
Foundation and head of the global development program at the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as “a proven manager” who
can “deliver excellent results at the highest levels.”

Republican leaders seized on Sebelius’s departure to
criticize the health-care law anew.

“Obamacare has been a rolling disaster, and her
resignation is cold comfort to the millions of Americans who
were deceived about what it would mean for them and their
families,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
said in a statement. He said that he hopes Burwell’s
confirmation hearings will be “the start of a candid
conversation about Obamacare’s shortcomings.”

More Questions

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said
Sebelius “oversaw a disastrous rollout of Obamacare, but anyone
can see that there are more problems on the way.”

Levi Russell, a spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, a
free-market advocacy group founded by the billionaire Koch
Brothers, predicted tough confirmation hearings to come.

“There are still a lot of unanswered questions,” Russell
said. “Where the money went and how so much was spent on a
total failure.”

Republicans have attacked the law since it passed Congress
in 2010 with only Democratic support. They were given fresh
ammunition in October when website intended as the main gateway
to federal health-care exchanges was plagued by delays and error
messages just as enrollment was supposed to get underway.

The next month, Obama was forced to apologize when
thousands of individual insurance plans were canceled after he
had repeatedly promised that people who liked their health plans
would be able to keep them.

Campaign Theme

Criticism of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
is a central theme of Republican campaign messages going into
November congressional elections.

Thirty-six Senate seats will be up for grabs in November:
21 occupied by Democrats and 15 by Republicans. Most of the
races rated as competitive by non-partisan analysts are in
states currently in the hands of Democrats. Republicans would
need a net gain of six seats to get a majority in the Senate,
giving them control of both chambers of Congress.

To win those seats, Republicans are seeking to exploit
continuing public discontent with the law.

Likely voters oppose the health care law 55 percent to 42
percent, according to a George Washington University
Battleground Poll taken March 16-20.

There have been 49,000 commercials broadcast with an anti-Obamacare message his election cycle through April 8, according
to New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG data. Americans for
Prosperity funded almost 40 percent of those commercials.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff said he expects both
Sebelius’s resignation and confirmation hearings on her
successor will have “zero impact” on the political climate
going in to the November congressional elections.

“Almost all cabinet secretaries are generally unknown to
the public and the coming and goings don’t matter,” McInturff
said. “What matters is whether the Obamacare program works, not
who is the secretary.”